iPhone 7 and 7 Plus review: Great annual upgrades with one major catch

The iPhone 7, the iPhone 7 Plus, and the things these phones hath wrought.

Andrew Cunningham

Up until now, every one of Apple’s
iPhone hardware updates has been additive. New iPhones do all the stuff
that the old ones could do, plus
some new stuff. Moving to bigger screens and swapping the 30-pin
connector for the Lightning connector have caused a little pain for
developers and users (respectively), but even those more disruptive
updates were fundamentally giving you more of something than last year’s offering.

It made iPhone upgrades generally pretty easy
to recommend. If your phone was two or three years old and wearing out,
there’s a new phone waiting for you that will be better than what you
have. Even small-screened phone die-hards eventually got the iPhone SE.

Broadly speaking, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus
still give you more: more speed, better camera, better screens, faster
LTE, more battery life, more water-resistant. Year-over-year, it’s a
respectable update. And compared to an aging iPhone 6 or 5S it’s a big
jump forward. There’s just one thing missing. You know what we’re talking about, right?

Apple believes that wireless audio is the
future, but instead of waiting for the future to get here, the company
is forcing the issue. The iPhone 7 removes the standard 3.5mm audio jack
in favor of audio over the Bluetooth protocol and its proprietary
Lightning port. Older iPhones can do all three, but the iPhone 7 can’t.

What is it like to use the first smartphone of
any real significance not to include a headphone jack? Where does it
create problems? When is it beneficial? And are the other things that
the iPhone 7 brings to the table enough to justify giving up such a
venerable and widespread port?

iPhone 7 and 7 Plus review: Great annual upgrades with one major catch
Reviewed by Chidinma C Amadi
on
6:40 PM
Rating: 5